It’s one of the most common questions I get from people I encounter in the tiny village I moved to at the edge of a lake on Vancouver Island. “It was time for a change,” I say, or “I’ve been wandering since I sold my house in Winnipeg, and this felt like the next right thing,” or “My kids all grew up and moved away so I thought it was my turn for an adventure,” or “I wanted a place with gentler winters.”
Whenever I’m asked the question, I have to pause and ask myself “Why DID I move here? What was the truest impetus for this decision and how do I explain that to other people when I don’t quite understand it myself? How do I talk about gut feelings and a life-long draw toward the ocean and a longing to be among tall trees and deep moss? And are there things I’m not fully admitting to myself or that I don’t want to say out loud – like a desire to be in a different place than where much of my trauma lives?”
It’s not that I doubt my decision – far from it – I have rarely felt more at peace about a big life choice than I have about this one. I love it here. My body feels like she has found home. I’m sitting right now looking out at the tall cedar tree in the backyard of my new home and I feel like I have found new friends among the trees. It still feels rather exceptional, after years of parenting and marriage and place-based work and looking after the needs of other people that I got to make this choice purely motivated by my own pleasure and longing. It’s a special kind of privilege that I have and I don’t take that for granted.
But what gets me into an existential place with this question is a bigger one that I often grapple with… Can I ever truly KNOW myself? Can I ever truly know, without a shadow of a doubt, that a choice I’m making is rooted in my own identity and desire and isn’t tinged with obligation, trauma, fear, or social conditioning? Can I ever really see myself clearly enough that I know which biases, beliefs, baggage, or barriers are shaping the choices I make?
I suppose it’s a rather odd question, coming from someone who’s relaunching a course called “Know Yourself, Free Yourself” in just a few weeks, but if you’ve been following me for awhile, you probably know by now that I have never been a person of absolutes – a person who doesn’t continue to question and explore an idea even after she’s put it into writing. I have often joked that I wished my books could be published with Velcro pages so that I could change the ones that no longer fully reflect the evolution of my beliefs and worldview.
Yes, I’m teaching a course with “Know Yourself” in the title, but that’s not because I believe we can ever FULLY know ourselves or that we are ever meant to be static enough in our identity that knowing ourselves is a once-and-done accomplishment. Quite the opposite – I believe that self-awareness is a life-long quest, and not something you can ever complete in an 8-week course. (Perhaps I should have called the course “Explore Yourself, Free Yourself”.)
As I said in the last post, I think identity is a rather slippery thing, and that’s okay with me. I don’t need it to be static. There are very few things that I feel like I need to know with 100% certainty anymore. Except when my nervous system is particularly activated and it feels like certainty would give me some measure of safety, I have mostly become quite accepting of ambiguity and liminality. Even when I make big decisions, like moving to an island 2400 kilometres from where I lived most of my life, I’m okay with a “good enough” understanding of why I made the choice.
There is still much to explore about who I am. I don’t fully know what I believe, for example, especially when it comes to faith and religion. I grew up with a narrow understanding of what faith was supposed to look like, and with regular reminders that if I didn’t have that particular kind of faith, I would suffer the punishment of hell. It took me a long time to work through the fear that that kind of teaching instilled in me (which I wrote more about in my book, Where Tenderness Lives), and when I finally realized it wasn’t a faith that felt alive in me anymore, I spent years trying to figure out what I actually DO believe. I haven’t let go of a belief that there is a loving divine who’s looking out for me, but now I more frequently use words like Mystery and Tenderness and that fits me better than the language of “God” (especially the male version of that terminology). But is there a tangible belief at the heart of this that I can claim and define? Not really – it feels different nearly every day. Much of it is rooted in a relationship with nature, but that doesn’t mean I’ve fully embraced language like “animism” or “wiccan”.
I also don’t fully know where I stand when it comes to my own gender and sexuality. I use she/her pronouns, and I’ve come out as queer (which I also wrote about in my newest book), but it still feels kind of fuzzy to me. Mostly I feel more attracted to women than to men, but it doesn’t feel definitive the way it seems to for some people (especially since I could also imagine myself with a non-binary or trans person anywhere on the spectrum). What’s the terminology for that, and… does it matter? I would defend the right of anyone who feels more certain than I about their sexual/gender identity (especially if it means they have to fight against transphobia to be their truest selves), but that doesn’t mean I can find that kind of certainty in my own body.
Beyond sexuality, there are many, many things I have yet to learn about my body. I get stuck in my head a lot and it’s only been in recent years that I started to pay more attention to what my body needs or what she is trying to communicate to me. Old habits die hard and so I still ignore many signals and forget to take care of myself. Sometimes I’m surprised to discover, years after something starts showing up in my body, that it’s related to a transition my body is going through (like menopause) or a past event.
In all of these cases – faith, sexuality and embodiment – I’ve experienced trauma that’s shaped the way I show up in the world, so… again, I don’t know what’s fully ME and what is a trauma imprint left in my body. Which leaves me wondering… is there any way to separate the two? Is there actually a version of identity, for any of us, that is not at least somewhat trauma-shaped. We are each an amalgamation of both our DNA and all of the experiences we’ve had in our lives, plus our DNA holds trauma from the lineage that came before us. In other words, it’s probably most true that trauma healing isn’t about reverting back to some magical pre-trauma state, but about learning the most healthy adaptation that allows the trauma-imprint to live in our bodies without causing further harm.
So maybe the best we can do is not to ever expect to KNOW ourselves, but to commit ourselves to a lifelong exploration of who we’ve become AND to allow ourselves to continue to evolve and shape-shift to meet the life ahead of us.
Which brings me back to my course, Know Yourself, Free Yourself. When I think of the impetus for creating the course, it’s less about trying to find certainty about our identity than it is about learning to be more at peace with the uncertainty, learning to see things about ourselves that might keep us bound to old narratives, and learning to find freedom so that we can continue to evolve instead of being held back by things like trauma, social conditioning, and the systems that oppress us.
It’s true that I will likely never fully know myself, but I will NEVER regret the quest to find out more about who I am, what (and who) I love, what shaped me, what limits me, what brings me delight, and what makes my body feel the most alive, safe and free. And I will never regret the depths I’ve gone to understand the shaping of a human – things like trauma, social conditioning, oppression, mental health, family systems, belief systems, and the way a human nervous system works. And, more than anything, I will never regret what it took to find the courage to step away from some of those old narratives that kept me in a box and claim my right to be someone other than the identity I once felt confined to.
Every step of this quest has been worthwhile, and it’s brought me here, to this little village at the edge of a lake on an island at the edge of a big country – a place where I feel deep joy and liberation and safety in my body, and a place where I don’t need to pretend to be someone I’m not.
Allow me to (re)introduce myself to you… My name is Heather. I live in Shawnigan Lake on Vancouver Island because I leaned into a desire that brought me toward the ocean and the tall trees. It’s also true that I wanted to see what it felt like for my body to live in a different city from where I experienced most of my trauma. I am a spiritual person, but my faith is liminal and not easy to define. I am queer, but I don’t entirely know how to define that either – just that my body lives in the liminal spaces of gender and sexuality. I keep evolving, so the things that were true of me last year might not be entirely true this year. I started liking coffee and the smell of lavender last year – both of which seem like strange things to start at the age of 56, but I’m okay with that. I have an adventurous spirit and I like to explore both my inner landscape and the landscape that lives outside of my body. I wrote two books that I’m proud of, but I’ll need to keep writing new books because the ideas I’ve put into words in the past may not be sufficient for the ways I’ll view the world (and myself) in the future.
I am pleased to meet you! What do you know about yourself?
“I don’t know who I am. I’ve shaped my life around other people for so long that I’ve lost sight of myself.” I used to hear some version of that sentiment quite regularly, ten years ago when more of my work involved coaching people. It was especially common among women in the 40-60 age range – women who’d spent years raising children, holding a marriage together, and/or building a career.
These people excelled at shape-shifting to meet the needs and expectations of everyone around them – children, partners, parents, employers, employees, community groups, etc. They’d shape-shifted so often that they’d lost track of who they were, what they needed, what gave them pleasure, and what they most wanted out of life. Most of them were at a loss when it came to making decisions that prioritized themselves rather than the people they cared about.
What many of these people were revealing (and what I, too, have struggled with) is that life had taught them to develop an external locus of identity. They’d become accustomed to defining themselves not by what they saw in themselves but by external factors such as other people’s opinions, societal norms, success measurements inherent in their careers, and their capacity to keep other people happy.
When you have an external locus of identity (or at least primarily lean in that direction on a spectrum), you tend to rely heavily on validation from others and on your ability to meet the standards set by your culture/career/family/religion/etc. Without much capacity for internal validation and self-worth, you feel insecure or inadequate when external factors don’t validate you. You crave the approval of others and the accolades that come with success, and you crumble in the face of criticism or failure.
To locate your sense of self primarily outside of yourself is to live a wobbly and destabilized life. It’s like tossing your anchor into another boat instead of sinking it into solid ground. Whenever the wind changes, or the other boat shifts its position, you’re knocked off your feet.
I struggled with this especially when I got divorced. I’d spent so much time looking after other people’s needs that I had no idea what I needed for myself. As I wrote in my book, Where Tenderness Lives: On healing, liberation, and holding space for oneself, it was only after I finally worked up the courage to choose myself and end an unhealthy marriage that I realized just how codependent I’d been in the marriage. I was so entangled in my former husband’s emotional well-being that I felt completely adrift when that was no longer at the centre of my life.
Why do some of us develop an external locus of identity? It starts in childhood, when we have little choice but to look to adults as our models for how to live. Some of us receive an excess of attention and affirmation from the adults in our lives, and we fail to develop the internal skills needed to affirm ourselves, and some of us receive too little attention and affirmation and are left always hungry for it. In school, we start picking up messages that those who get the best grades receive the most praise from adults, those who excel at sports or performance are popular with their peers, and those who behave well in class receive preferential treatment from teachers. We learn to perform for other people’s expectations so that they’ll love us and care for us.
With adulthood should come individuation and the development of our sense of self and capacity for internal validation, but many of us remain stunted in our emotional growth because of trauma, abuse, social conditioning, or other extenuating circumstances. We’re often held back because of the cultural or family systems we’re part of. If you were raised in a high control group or authoritarian household where you were rarely allowed your own choices (and punished if you made the wrong ones), it can be particularly difficult to, as an adult, learn to trust yourself and claim an identity outside of that system.
Even outside of those more extreme environments, many of us weren’t given the tools or modeling to make good choices on our own behalf, or to see ourselves through any other lens than what the system equipped us with. In a patriarchal system, for example, women are taught to sacrifice our own needs in service to others, and so we develop beliefs that we are selfish if we focus too much on ourselves. Men, on the other hand, are taught that to show emotion is to reveal weakness, and so they often fail to develop skills in self-reflection or emotional maturity. In a religious system, for another example, when a person is told to look to God for all direction in their life and they’re led to believe that they are sinful and worthless without God, it can be difficult to develop independent decision-making skills or a sense of self-worth.
At the core of what we all need in life, from our first day on earth to our last, are three things which are both separate and closely intertwined – safety, belonging, and identity. When those needs are not being met and we feel under threat, we tend to sacrifice our identity so that we can better ensure our access to safety and belonging. When a community or family we’re part of fails to validate a particular part of our identity, we learn to mask that part of ourselves so that we won’t be abandoned. People who are queer, neurodivergent, or disabled often become the most proficient at masking in order to fit in. Many of us lose sight of who we are and become like those boats anchored to other boats instead of the firm ground beneath us, largely because we don’t trust people to fully embrace us otherwise. (I teach more about these primary needs and how they shape us in Know Yourself, Free Yourself.)
Sadly, social media has been an exacerbating factor for those who already struggle with an external locus of identity. While those with the most likes, comments, and shares develop the most social capital and clout (and make the most money), the rest of us are tempted to measure our own worth by their standards. These measuring sticks and popularity contests are in front of us every single day and that can mess with even the most grounded among us. In a podcast I listened to recently, researchers talked about how, despite evidence that their platforms are designed in such a way that negatively impacts people’s self-esteem (especially youth), social media companies refuse to change anything. They have learned to monetize our low self-esteem and attachment to other people’s opinions, so why should they do it differently? Those of us already inclined toward an external locus of identity are further destabilized by the algorithms of social media.
Capitalism (often working hand-in-hand with social media) is also an exacerbating factor. Even those most grounded in a solid sense of self sometimes find themselves knocked off centre when they struggle to make a decent living and can’t pay the bills or buy the things that give their families comfort. If you’re not valued in a capitalist system – if what you produce or the ways that you serve the public are not paid well, or if you are unable to contribute to capitalism because of disability, mental health or family demands – it’s hard to keep holding your head up and finding your inherent value apart from that system.
I’ve recognized this in myself recently as I’ve been marketing my new book, Where Tenderness Lives: On healing, liberation, and holding space for oneself. The book is all about learning to love myself and my body; to ground myself in joy and surround myself with tenderness; to detach myself from external expectations, value judgements, and cultural pressures; and to move toward personal and collective liberation. AND… in order to get that book into people’s hands, I have to be out in the public (especially social media) promoting it in what feels so often like a plea of “like me, PLEASE like me… and like my book and buy it and tell people about it and rate it favourably with those five little stars and PLEASE make me worthy of measuring up according to capitalism’s measuring stick!”
It’s a slippery thing, trying to sink our anchors into solid ground – trying to root our identities in a healthy sense of self instead of other people’s opinions or pocketbooks – when so many forces seem to be working against us. And yet… I believe that that is where our liberation lies. We only become free when we unhook our anchors from other people’s boats (and the systems those boats are connected to) and start looking for the solid ground beneath us. (Note: this doesn’t mean we stop being interdependent with other people – just that we don’t attach our value and identity to their opinions, needs, or expectations.)
The unhooking can feel cataclysmic though, so I don’t offer this reflection lightly. As I found when I finally ended my marriage, after five years of considering it, it can take a lot of self-reflection followed by a life-shattering moment (or in the reverse order) for us to wake up and recognize the ways in which we’ve been shaped and lost sight of ourselves. Sometimes it can take years to fully unravel the old programming and to learn to make courageous choices that allow us to chart new paths.
Before I end this, there is one more thing that’s worth mentioning… identity itself is a slippery thing, and that makes this even more tricky. I don’t believe it’s wise to imagine that we might some day know exactly who we are and that whatever conclusion we come to will become our fixed identity for time immemorial. I think we are meant to be evolving humans who keep learning new things about ourselves and keep being open to the surprise of our own unfolding. (I may write about that more in a future post.) And I think we are meant to be shaped by our relationships, even if we shouldn’t anchor our identities in the whims of the people we’re in relationship with. That might offer further clues as to why we’re sometimes tempted to place the locus of our identity outside of ourselves, though – because we become confused by our own evolution, and we do need other people (we are social creatures, after all), and sometimes it feels safer and more comfortable to be defined by a person who sees us from the outside.
While other people’s perceptions of us can be enlightening and can offer us insights beyond what we can see in ourselves (at least when those people have our best interests at heart), ultimately, though, we are best to hold those insights and perceptions with healthy non-attachment so that we don’t slip into the trap of trying to live up to their expectations of us and therefore abandoning ourselves.
In conclusion, I would suggest that while reclaiming our right to define and shape our own identities (rather than allowing them to live outside of us), the goal is not to claim solid, immoveable identities, but to claim the right to each have an evolving identity. Perhaps the goal in life is to simply be pilgrims on life-long quests for what sets us free and brings us joy. I imagine us dancing together down the path, finding discoveries as we go and sharing them with each other in delight (without judging each other or trying to hold anyone back).
I have lots of thoughts about how to untangle oneself from an external locus of identity and how to be such a pilgrim. I have thoughts about finding practices that help keep us grounded, unraveling the messages we’ve received in the past, healing trauma, building secure attachments, and making hard choices. I teach about them in the upcoming course, Know Yourself, Free Yourself (which starts March 5th), and I’ve written about my own pilgrimage in new book, Where Tenderness Lives: On healing, liberation, and holding space for oneself..
If you are waking up to a realization that you have a primarily external locus of identity, take heart. You are not alone and you are in the right place. This realization is the start to a long pilgrimage, and if you’re willing to take it, you won’t ever regret it. I’ll meet you on the path.
It’s been a year. I don’t quite know which adjective to put in front, so I’ll just say that – it’s been a year. A year in which the last of my daughters moved away from home, quickly following her two sisters. A year in which I sold my home, gave away most of my furniture and belongings, put my personal items into storage and intentionally stepped into the liminal space of homelessness. A year in which I set off on my “love and liberation tour”, starting with a few weeks across Canada and then three months in Europe. A year in which I journeyed with a dear friend toward his medically assisted death. A year in which I wrote the final chapters of a book of personal essays in Costa Rica and Spain and then sent it off to the publisher. A year in which I returned to teaching in-person workshops in two European countries after two and a half years of only online work during a global pandemic.
The personal growth and healing that happened this year felt monumental. I let go of some old beliefs, learned to be more and more tender with myself, practiced acceptance in a more profound way, and stretched myself into increased courage.
I’m in a rented apartment back in Winnipeg where my daughters (who live in cities spread out across the country) and I have gathered to close off the year together. My daughters are still all asleep and I’ve put the kettle on for tea as I sit here reflecting on some of the things I’ve learned and relearned this year. Here are some of those things:
Spend time with dying people. Few things in my life have impacted my growth more than time spent with dying people (see my viral blog post about my mom’s death) and this year I had the indescribable gift of walking with my friend Randy along his journey with ALS and toward his death. Our weekly Zoom calls and my two trips to visit him softened me, stretched me, challenged me, and grew me. Sometimes I watched him wrestle with the frustration of what he was losing as his body deteriorated, but mostly I witnessed the grace and acceptance as he chose to spend his final year in joy and connection. On the day that Randy was dying (with medical assistance), I was in Brussels, serendipitously traveling with my friend Brenda who is living with cancer that will likely kill her, and she was able to hold space for me in a special way because she has her own relationship with death. As I become more and more intimate with death, I am learning to be more fully alive.
Accept the fly. In my last visit with Randy, this was one of the final teachings he offered me. ALS had ravaged his body and he had little movement left. He told me about the time he’d been lying in his bed waiting to be moved into the chair where he spent his days, and a fly kept landing on his face. He had no ability to chase the fly away, so he turned it into a spiritual practice. “Can I accept the fly?” he asked himself, and then he practiced simply being present with the fly instead of being irritated by it. I have repeated that question to myself many times since, whenever something or someone is irritating me. “Can I simply accept and co-exist with this person/situation/challenge/inconvenience/etc.?”
Be tender with yourself. The tenderness practice that I started in 2021 has grown into one of the most meaningful things in my life. Being intentionally tender with myself has helped me learn to love and accept myself in ways I didn’t think were possible. It’s helped me cope with anxiety, course correct when I start spiraling into self-doubt and shame, and pause when I’m slipping into the Three P’s – perfectionism, performance measurement, and punishment. You can learn more about it in my free webinar, in the upcoming course Know Yourself, Free Yourself, or in retreat with me in Costa Rica.
“Let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” After I listed my house for sale and prepared to embark on my liberation and tenderness tour in the Spring, I got the above line from the Mary Oliver poem, Wild Geese, tattooed on my arm. I wanted a daily reminder to honour what my body most wants and needs, to choose my own body’s version of love, and to let go of the social conditioning that taught me to shame, punish, restrict and ignore my own body while looking after everyone else’s needs before my own.
Let go of things and give them to people who need them more than you do. When we were nearing the end of our packing and purging process, just before transferring ownership of the house to strangers, my daughters and I lined up all the things we didn’t know what to do with along the sidewalk in front of our house, put a “free stuff” sign on it and posted it on Facebook marketplace. In our brief conversations with the many people who came, we heard stories of refugees who’d fled war in their countries, single moms on fixed incomes trying to create home for their kids, and international students setting up apartments for the first time. It felt meaningful to be able to support so many people in creating a sense of home even as I was dismantling the one that had meant so much to me for twenty-four years.
Be honest with yourself. As I transition into this new era, with no dependent daughters living with me, I am asking myself a lot of questions about what I most want and need, what makes me happy, which relationships matter the most, and how I want to live. I am learning to be more and more honest with myself, honouring myself in ways I didn’t know how to in the past. Sometimes this new honesty surprises me and sometimes the choices that come with it don’t make sense to other people, so there is growth and some discomfort involved, but in the end, I believe it’s all worth it. “Tell the truth to yourself,” sing the Avett Brothers, “and the rest will fall in place.”
Wonder, wonder, wander. This is a personal practice I wrote about a couple of years ago and I put it into even more practice in the latter part of this year. First, wonder as a noun… “a feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable.” Second, wonder as a verb… “desire or be curious to know something.” And third, wander… “walk or move in a leisurely, casual, or aimless way.” (Read more about it here.) I did a lot of wandering in Europe, for hours at a time in several countries, and all the wandering helped me find myself in new and meaningful ways. It also helped my body find its equilibrium.
Stay a little longer in the places where your body feels ease. When I was in Sitges, Spain, a beautiful seaside town that’s one of the most queer-friendly places in Europe, I felt my body relax into the kind of ease I hadn’t felt in quite some time. There’s something about large bodies of water that almost always soothes my nervous system while also making my body feel more alive and vital. Add that to the welcoming, safe feeling of the town, and I noticed a perceptible difference in the unsettled feeling I’d been experiencing since the move out of my house in the summer. Instead of moving on to my next destination, I gave my body the gift of a few more days by the sea.
Fly across the country for a friend who matters. My friend Randy lived on the east coast, thousands of kilometres away from me, but when he told me he was dying last year, I made it a priority to visit him (once in the Spring and once in the Fall just before leaving for Europe) and those are trips I will never regret spending money on. Friendships that are worth flying across the country for are immeasurable treasures and I will NEVER take them for granted. One of the things I appreciated most about Randy was the way that he showed his delight in people, showering them with a special kind of love, and I was glad that I could give that love back to my dear friend in his dying year. Invest in friendships and hold onto the people who delight in you. Those are friendships that help you see your own beauty.
Witness the world through the eyes of someone losing their sight. When I was in the Netherlands, I spent a few days with my friend Cath, a visual artist who is losing her eyesight. Cath is a reflective person (and grief therapist) who’s learning to witness the world differently as her eyesight declines and incorporate that into her art. My time with her helped me to be more aware of both the gift and the limitations of living with and navigating the world with a disability. Cath regularly shares images of the textures and colours that she sees on her walks through the city on social media, and it’s changed my perspective on the world and on what it means to live in a disabled body.
Talk to your inner child. Part of my tenderness practice involves witnessing the younger versions of myself that show up when I am triggered, anxious, disconnected, or overwhelmed. I’ve learned to pause to give that younger version of myself a voice, to allow her to express her concerns and needs, and to give her what she didn’t know how to (or wasn’t allowed to) ask for. Sometimes I sit on a park bench with my journal writing conversations with a younger version of myself or writing letters to her. It’s been a healing and empowering practice, integrating all parts of myself into who I am and who I’m becoming.
Talk to your emotions. Another part of my tenderness practice is to have conversations with my emotions. When I feel afraid, for example, I ask my fear what it is trying to tell me. When I am excited, I let that excitement have a voice rather than trying to dampen it with “grown-up” sensibility. (You can read more about this in The House that Tenderness Built.) I’m learning to feel more safe with any emotion when it arises and to course correct when my trauma wants to send me into dissociation.
Ask for what you need. This goes along with the above practices about being more honest with myself and witnessing my inner child. I’m learning (and relearning) how to honour my own needs and to ask other people to help fill them when necessary (without becoming too attached to an expectation that they do so). It’s brought up some discomfort and has forced me to confront some of the social conditioning I have about what it means to be a “good woman” who minimizes herself in service to others, AND it’s also helped me to have healthier boundaries and to be more tender with myself. Just last week, when the first AirBnB I’d rented for my daughters and I was a sad and dirty place, I practiced asking for what I needed by requesting a refund and finding a better place.
Stop trying to change people. This is one of those life-long learning things that didn’t just land in 2022, but seemed to gain more clarity this year. Perhaps it had something to do with my daughters all setting off into lives of their own while I supported each of them in making choices that were best for them. This year, I practiced internalizing a mantra I’ve heard my friend Michael say many times: “Nobody and nothing has to change.” When I let go of the expectations that other people would show up in the way I wanted them to show up and leaned further into an acceptance of just who they were, I became more resilient in the face of their inability to meet my needs AND I learned to turn elsewhere to have the needs met that they weren’t able to meet.
Let go of beliefs that don’t serve you. Again, this is lifelong stuff that gained increased clarity in 2022. I spent quite a bit of time this year interrogating my belief systems and asking myself which of my beliefs were genuinely mine and which ones belonged to my parents, my culture, my lineage, my trauma, etc. (There will be lots more about this in the book I’ll be publishing in the coming year. It’s also an important part of Know Yourself, Free Yourself, a course I’ll be offering again in March – registration opening soon.) Some of the beliefs seemed worth hanging onto, some seemed like they were holding me back in my evolution into the next part of my life, and some I continue to wrestle with. This is all part of the “liberation” that I’m referencing when I say I’m on my “liberation and tenderness tour”, and it will be part of the upcoming retreat in Costa Rica. (Join us at the end of January – there are still spots available.)
Learn to love your own company. As I’ve grown older, I’ve grown increasingly comfortable with solitude. In fact, I crave it whenever I’ve been with people for too long. I spent much of my time in Europe (especially the last month, after the teaching portion was finished) in solitude and I genuinely loved it. Many people assume that traveling solo is second best when you can’t find anyone to travel with you, but I love it just as much as I love traveling with friends or family. (I’m happy to have a mix of both.) I like making choices that are solely focused on my own comfort and delight. I like exploring places by myself. I like being alone with my thoughts for hours and hours. Most importantly, I like ME.
Go on a quest to find the version of you that wants to evolve next. This year when my daughters left, I stepped into an intentional liminal space that felt like a vision quest. I let go of familiarity, let go of home, let go of routine, and let go of my comfort zone. I wandered into unknown places to meet myself in a new way, I asked important questions of myself, I followed my curiosity, I sat with discomfort, and I played with new ideas and possibilities. I called it my “liberation and tenderness tour” because I was liberating myself of old baggage and old stories and learning to be increasingly tender with myself. It has already been life-changing and it’s not over yet (I leave for Costa Rica next week). I would highly recommend some version of this for anyone who’s going through an important transition, especially for those whose children are moving into their adult lives.
Thank you for journeying with me in 2022 in whatever way you have, even if you’ve just discovered my writings recently. I hope that what I have offered will inspire you to live with more courage, intention, liberation, tenderness, and ease as we step across the threshold into 2023.
I am a meaning maker. A word warrior. A truth teller.
To me, the written word is like a flashlight, illuminating the darkness just enough so that I can see the next place my foot should land on the path. When I read other people’s words, they light the path for me. When I write my own words, I hold the flashlight for myself. And when I share those words, I turn the flashlight back and light the path for those who come after me.
Right now, I want to have words. I want to read them, write them, and share them. I want to cling to them like a lifeline.
I want to make sense of this strange world we’re living in. I want to illuminate the liminal space of COVID19 — with other people’s words and with my own. I want to know where to put my feet and I want to shine the light so that others will find firm footing too.
I turn to the poets and they lend me some comfort and meaning, but none of their poems fully satisfy the ache. I turn to my journal, but mostly I stare at a blank page. I turn to the stack of books on my nightstand, but none resonate with the tuning fork of this particular moment in history.
More than anything, I want to give a name to this thing that’s taken up residence in the pit of my stomach.
To name it is to tame it, I tell myself, as I wrack my brain for the right words for these emotions. Fear? Existential dread? Claustrophobia? Anxiety? Grief? Agitation? Restlessness? Loneliness? Emptiness? Malaise? Distrust? Despair? Anger?
What about the spaces in between the emotions, or the spaces where they overlap? Is there a word for grief-anxiety? Or loneliness-agitation? Is there a way to capture the way they swell up in me, one on top of the other?
What about the times when the emotions settle into little more than a dull ache – like mild indigestion in the pit of my stomach? And… is that joy that’s unexpectedly peaking through now and then? Or hopefulness? Peace? Ease? Restfulness? Are those things real or am I just imagining them?
What about the collective emotions? Is this thing in the pit of my stomach only mine, or am I holding a piece of something much bigger than me? How does this shadow of fear that’s spread over the whole planet feel when it lands in my own gut? What about my children’s emotions – do they swell up in my body the way their tiny bodies once lived in my womb?
I feel the questions fill me, but I don’t find any answers. I ponder, for a moment, whether we need a new name for this emotion – something to mark the newness of the place we find ourselves in. Covidaphobia? Coronanxiety? Is there something that will capture the many layers of uncertainty and loss and instability and unfairness and complexity? Is there something that speaks to the macro (the number of people who will potentially die or have their lives destroyed from this) and the micro (the small day-to-day ways that I and my family are impacted)?
No answers land. No words show up on the page. There is nothing that makes sense in this senseless landscape.
And so I go to my basement and pull out the large canvas I’d been saving to someday make something pretty with. But I don’t want to make it pretty today. I want it to hold the things I can’t put into words. I want it to be messy and unfinished and liminal and therapeutic.
I splash paint on the surface and, foregoing the paint brush, thrust my hand into the paint, swirling it around, spreading it to the edges of the canvas. It feels good to have my hand covered in paint.
At first I have to resist the urge to make it meaningful, to make it “say” something. My old ways of making meaning bubble to the surface and I want to translate what I’m feeling into something that makes sense – something logical and with shape. Would an ocean with waves represent how this feels? Is it the heart of coronavirus I want to express on the canvas? Is it a spiral? A globe? A labyrinth? A cave?
But every time I try to make it familiar and understandable, I feel constricted and frustrated. This is something different. It’s messy. It’s a process. Its meaning is in the doing, not in the outcome.
It’s sometimes ugly and sometimes beautiful. It’s sometimes dark and sometimes light. There are moments when I love it and moments when I hate it. There are moments when it cracks me open and the grief erupts like a volcano from my body. There are moments when it stills the churning in my body and I finally find the peace that has eluded me in many weeks. There are moments when I feel myself dancing with lightness as I paint and moments when I want to burn it all to the ground.
I’m tempted to stop in a moment when I like what’s on the canvas. But that feels like cheating – like falling back on an old pattern – so I pour black paint on my hand and drag it through my favourite bits on the canvas. The black feels like truth.
When my body tells me there’s nothing left in me to express, I stop. And in that moment I look down and realize that what’s left on my hand is the most beautiful part.
The next day, I go back to the canvas. Again, I spill more paint and drag it across the canvas. This time a shape emerges. Sometimes it looks like a giant eye, sometimes it looks like lips. Again, I drag black through it. And then silver. And then I drag my finger nails down the page until it looks like everything on the page is caught behind prison bars. And then drops of red, like blood dripping down the canvas.
The emotional waves rise and fall, but they feel easier to hold this time – less constricted. Whatever shows up in my body shows up on the canvas. I don’t try to give anything names – only colours.
Whenever I look down at my hand, I see that it is beautiful. I resist the urge to give that meaning – instead I simply notice it.
The canvas never makes sense. But at the same time, it makes all the sense in the world.
I will keep going back to it, again and again, adding layer upon layer as long as this liminal space keeps us in this shapeless, senseless void. I will let it tell my body things that my brain can’t understand.
I will pour my feelings out through my hand onto the canvas and I won’t wrestle them into meaning.
Yesterday morning I was in an emotional tailspin. The night before, at the end of a long day of coaching clients, I made a couple of mistakes that were pointed out by people and it put me in a shame spiral. And then, partly because I was already fragile, another person’s actions annoyed me and I landed in an anger spiral that resulted in me saying some words I shouldn’t have.
I could just chalk this up to jet lag and excuse myself for it all by saying that I’m still adjusting to being home and that I jumped into client work too quickly after the intensity of facilitating three retreats and I should have known better than to interact with people who challenge me after a full day of coaching… but that would largely be me letting myself off the hook for bad behaviour. All of those things are true… but there’s also something else for me to consider in this. It’s what I tell my clients all of the time…
My discomfort will not kill me.
Making mistakes won’t kill me. Getting angry won’t kill me. Having to clean up from my mistakes won’t kill me. If anything, those things will make me a little more resilient and help me grow. And I am reminded, once again, that when I insist on self-care and periods of quiet and introspection after doing intense work far from home, it’s not only for my own good, but for the good of those impacted by my moods.
Today I’m not talking to any clients and I’m going to be gentle with myself. And I’m going to make retributions for some of the mistakes I made yesterday. And I’m choosing not to hide the shame bits because there is worthwhile learning in them.
I used to run from discomfort – try to numb myself from it in any way I could. Shut down the anger, eat away the shame, distract myself from the pain, lash out when I needed to blame someone other than me. I was too scared to look inside of it, too scared I’d see only ugliness in the shadows.
I still hide sometimes (hello Netflix, my favourite distraction) but I’m learning, gradually, to stay more present in it, breathe/pray/dance/journal my way through it, until it begins to crack open and I find the gems in the shadows. It takes less time to shift than it used to – I still got a reasonable night’s sleep the night before last, despite the places my spiralling brain wanted to take me. I will survive. I can see my own shadow now without letting it consume me.
Though I might not like it, discomfort is one of my greatest teachers. In fact, I’m not sure if I ever learn anything worthwhile without at least a little discomfort.
Discomfort became fairly central to one of my retreats last week. It’s usually at least somewhat present at all of my retreats (because I encourage people to stretch themselves), but at this one we had an opportunity to go deeper with it than usual.
The retreat was about holding space for others, and each of the retreat participants had been given an assignment that, on the fourth day of the retreat, they would practice holding space for the group. On Saturday, each person signed up for a 45 minute slot when they could host a conversation on a topic that mattered to them, teach us a movement/art/meditation practice that would help us hold space for ourselves, or find some other creative and meaningful way of helping us explore what it means to hold space.
Few people go on retreat and expect to do some of the hosting/teaching themselves, so there was, not surprisingly, some resistance and discomfort. Some handled it with humour, some shut down with anxiety, and some pushed back against me. None of it was offensive (they were genuinely good-hearted and emotionally mature people taking ownership of their own responses), but I could sense the work they needed to do in order to step forward into their own leadership.
I assigned this work not because I wanted the easy way out (ie. a day of no teaching), but because I knew that they would leave the retreat with more skills if they practiced what they were learning in a safe and supportive environment. And I knew, from personal experience, that working through their discomfort would be good for them in the end.
At the beginning of all of my retreats, I introduce participants to the concept of “brave space”.“While we will work together to make this space safe for everyone,” I say, “I prefer to talk about ‘brave spaces’ rather than safe ones. Sometimes, when we focus on safety, we’re actually focusing on comfort, and we don’t take risks or face challenges with bravery. While you are here, I want to encourage you to be brave, to have conversations that challenge you, to face the shadow in yourself when it shows up, to look after yourself in radical ways, and to dare to re-engage even when things get difficult.” (Note: click on the link above to learn more about where this concept emerged.)
I follow that up by saying “this is also a consent-based environment. While I will encourage your bravery, and may nudge you past comfort, I also promise to accept ‘no’ as an answer. You alone know what you can handle and I invite you to take responsibility for where your boundaries need to be and what you’re not willing to consent to.”
Thirdly, I say (in the words of my teacher, Christina Baldwin) that “in this space, we ask for what we need and offer what we can. That means we are each invited to honour our own needs, look after ourselves, and respond as well as we can to other people’s needs. We will practice reciprocity, step into our personal leadership, honour boundaries, and do our best to make this space both brave and safe for all of us.”
When I assigned the participants at this retreat the task of hosting a 45 minute segment of our Saturday, I encouraged them to step into brave space. “This is your chance to push past your comfort zone, to try something that might feel too risky at home where you’re surrounded by people who know you. In this environment, where people are committed to holding space for each other, dare to push through your discomfort to find your bravery.”
When Saturday arrived, the air was charged with a mixture of anticipation, excitement and fear. I knew it would be good, but of course I also had moments of doubt, wondering whether it might backfire. Would people hate it and hate me and leave the retreat with a bad taste in their mouths? Would we have enough energy to support nine people’s individual steps into courage? Would it be repetitive if too many sessions were similar? Would those with anxiety simply shut down and not be able to participate? How would I support them if they did?
You can probably guess how it all played out. The day was brilliant. People were courageous and supportive and creative and inspiring.We had nine very different sessions, each one of them keeping us engaged and inspired. We made art, we learned movement practice, we had an honest conversation about creating more inclusive space in women’s circles, we learned a beautiful Maori greeting (hongi), we practiced mindfulness, and we played. It was one of the best days I’ve had in a long time.
On Sunday morning, after the last session, I invited everyone to participate in a ritual to mark what had transpired. On a piece of paper, each person wrote down what they wanted to honour themselves for and what commitment they wanted to make to themselves for the future. They then carried the piece of paper into the labyrinth, and placed it on a cairn of stones at the centre. When they emerged from the labyrinth, I offered each one a personal blessing, reflecting on something I’d witnessed in them during the week, and then, if they chose, they could step over a line on the ground that marked the crossing of a threshold into whatever would come next.
Standing at the edge of the labyrinth was a beautiful experience. There was energy and excitement mixed with contemplation and some fear. There was commitment and resolve and courage and fierceness. There were tears and there was laughter. There was humanity and humility and hope. That labyrinth served as the container for the complexity of all human emotions, while I “held the rim”.
Rhonda, one of the retreat participants, later said this of the labyrinth experience… “I realized at that moment, at the center of the labyrinth, everything that I had always sought, chased, pursued, agonized to find and discover in my own life and purpose was already within. I just need to accept it. I felt God look at me with the biggest smile and say ‘It’s about time.’ It was a most defining moment. I feel like I am no longer living ‘from’ my history.”
Later that day, it was time for us all to depart. As I looked around the circle of women, I couldn’t help but notice the difference from just a few days earlier. These were courageous, strong women who were now a little more aware of their own courage and strength. They had worked through their discomfort, trusted each other to hold space for their fear, and emerged triumphant.
The good-byes from that retreat were different from what they often are at retreats. People were ready to go home. They were ready and excited to step into what was next. Unlike what often happens at the end of retreats, they didn’t seem to have the need to cling to the comfort and warmth of the circle that had held them. Though they valued the support of the group, they stepped away with a sense of self-reliance.
They had come as learners and they were leaving as leaders.
They had chosen not to let their discomfort keep them from finding their courage. I can hardly wait to see what they are capable of!
Today, while I consider what to do with the discomfort I faced a couple of days ago, I make a new resolve to step into courage because I have the memory of those women to inspire me.
“It’s a long and rugged road and we don’t now where it’s headed But we know it’s going to get us where we’re going And when we find what we’re looking for we’ll drop these bags and search no more ‘Cuz it’s going to feel like heaven when we’re home It’s going to feel like heaven when we’re home.” – From the song Heaven When We’re Home, by the Wailin’ Jennys
Last week, I found home in Florida, and, like the song says, it felt like heaven.
No, I’m not planning to move there any time soon (I’m not sure this Canadian girl could handle the humidity), but I found home nonetheless.
That home was in front of 175 people teaching a workshop on Holding Space through Grief and Trauma (see above photo). I taught the whole workshop, from 9 to 3:30, without any notes (other than my Powerpoint slides) – because this is my home. This is my work. This is the lifeblood that runs through my veins. The next day I taught two half-day workshops on The Circle Way and it was the same.
I know this material and these stories so well, have spoken and written about them so many times, that notes are no longer necessary. I can stand in front of 175 strangers and feel energized and a little nervous but still perfectly at home.
Some people call it a divine assignment, some people call it a calling, some call it your life’s purpose. In some Indigenous cultures, it’s referred to as your “original medicine” – the unique gift that you and only you can offer toward the healing of the world.
Whatever you call it, when you find it, you feel like you have finally come home.
Here’s what I know about finding it:
Home is a lot more beautiful when you’ve taken a journey away from it. I spent many years doing work that didn’t feel like home, but that was all part of the quest that helped me find it. The more work I did that didn’t feel like “my work” the more clear I became about what I was looking for. A few days ago, I heard a chef on The Chef’s Table say that he’s known he’d be a chef since he was 14 years old. I’m intrigued by that kind of clarity, but that’s not the journey that was meant for me. There’s no way I could have imagined the work I do now when I was 14 – I had to take the long journey to get here.
The quest for home will take you through “alien lands”. I couldn’t say it better than Parker Palmer does: “Most of us arrive at a sense of self and vocation only after a long journey through alien lands. But this journey bears no resemblance to the trouble-free ‘travel packages’ sold by the tourism industry. It is more akin to the ancient tradition of pilgrimage – “a transformative journey to a sacred centre” full of hardships, darkness, and peril.” There are many out there who are selling very tempting “trouble-free travel packages”, but what you’ll get from them is an empty shell of what you’re really meant to find in your life. Take the “road less traveled”. It’s risky, but it’s real.
The path through the “darkness and peril” builds your resilience and helps you to eventually see the light. It was when I learned to surrender to the darkness and begin to see the purpose and meaning of it that I finally started to find the clarity I was seeking. I can only teach about topics like grief and trauma and the liminal space because I learned to navigate those worlds myself, and I could only learn to navigate them when I stopped resisting them. Wherever you are now, there is meaning in it and there are lessons to be learned from even the hardest moments.
It all matters. Even those long years of doing work that didn’t feel connected to me mattered. I honed my communication skills writing speeches for politicians and government officials. I learned storytelling traveling to developing countries and telling the stories of the non-profit organization I worked for. I learned how to create enough content for a full day workshop when I was teaching courses in Writing for Public Relations at the university. It may not have been the content I wanted to speak or write about, but those were the skills I needed for what I now do.
A true purpose includes generosity and responsibility toward others. If you live a self-absorbed life, you will be forever searching for the meaning of it. Look beyond yourself to find your purpose. “A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the “why” for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any “how”. ― Viktor E. Frankl
Many will never understand your quest or your purpose. Last week, crossing the border into the U.S., I was held up for an hour (and nearly refused entry), trying to explain my work to a confused border agent who couldn’t find an appropriate category in his big binder full of visa information. I get the same kind of confusion from lawyers, accountants, friends, family, etc. I used to think I just needed the right “elevator speech”, but no matter what I tried, there were always people who gave me confused looks. I gave up on the elevator speech and simply learned to accept that the work I’ve been called to doesn’t fit well with cocktail party small talk or border crossings.
The right people will get it. It doesn’t take long to figure out whether a seat mate on the airplane, a participant at a workshop, or another parent on the soccer field is on a similar quest as I am on. If I speak words like “holding space” or “The Circle Way” and their eyes light up, I know we’ll be able to have a meaningful conversation. In Florida, those 175 people, who mostly support children in grief and trauma, stayed with me through every word. When that happens, it doesn’t really matter how many confused looks there were until that point.
It will take a lot out of you and it will give a lot back. Whenever I finish doing work that really matters – like that workshop in Florida – I am both exhausted and invigorated. Though it flows with ease when I am doing the right work, it is far from easy. It’s true that I didn’t need notes up there, but that’s because I was sharing from such a deep and intimate place of my own stories of grief and trauma that notes are unnecessary. My heart was being poured out in front of 175 people. I do it out of pure love, but I know that this kind of work must be followed by a few days of rest and solitude.
Desire is a guide even when you try to deny it. I had a lot of baggage around my desire to stand in front of a crowd of people speaking of things that were important to me. “It must be my pride that yearns for the spotlight,” I convinced myself. I needed to be more humble than that. I should be happy being in the background. But as much as I tried to deny it, it’s where I felt called to be and now, because I learned to silence those voices that told me I was wrong to want it, I can stand there and feel at home. “To have a desire in life literally means to keep your star in sight, to follow a glimmer, a beacon, a disappearing will-o’-the-wisp over the horizon into some place you cannot yet fully imagine. A deeply held desire is a star that is particularly your own, it might disappear for awhile, but when the skies clear we catch sight of it again and recognize the glimmer.” – David Whyte
When you find it, it’s even better than you imagined it would be. I have had lots of discouraging days along this journey, lots of times when I thought I was deluding myself, and lots of times when I started looking for other work because it was all taking far too long. But now? I can hardly believe how lucky I am. I have moments of pure joy that are unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. Who knew that speaking on topics like grief and trauma could be so invigorating? Just as I surrendered to and learned from the darkness and the grief, I am surrendering to and learning from the light and the joy.
After the workshops were finished, I stayed in Florida a few extra days to spend some focused time creating the content for my Holding Space Coach/Facilitator Program, and once again, in my little Airbnb room close to the ocean, writing in solitude, I was home. Because my calling is not to stand in front of a room of hundreds – my calling is to teach, in whatever form it takes, this work that feeds my soul and invites me to feed other souls.
“I’m not a teacher: only a fellow traveler of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead – ahead of myself as well as you.” – George Bernard Shaw
I hope that you find it too – the place that calls you, the work that whispers to you in your quietest moments. I hope that your own long journey is worth it and that you relish the joy that and healing that can come when you find home.
– by David Whyte